Photo: an aged Nordic runestone in a blooming field, from the Scandification media library. A general view, not a specific named stone.
You probably said a Viking word before you finished your breakfast. If you cracked an egg, opened a window or put a knife in the sink, you used vocabulary that English borrowed from Old Norse more than a thousand years ago. Even the little word they is a Scandinavian import.
English is a Germanic language, so it shares a deep family tree with Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. But the Norse words below were not inherited from a distant common ancestor. They were borrowed, mostly across a dinner table, a marketplace or a marriage bed, during the centuries when Scandinavians settled in England. Later, in the modern era, English went on borrowing from the Nordic languages for things the English-speaking world had no word for, from skiing to flat-pack furniture.
How Old Norse Ended Up in English
The story starts with the raids of the late 8th century and turns into settlement in the 9th. By the 870s, large parts of northern and eastern England were under Scandinavian control, an area later known as the Danelaw. Settlers farmed the land, founded towns, married local people and traded with their neighbours. For generations, Old English speakers and Old Norse speakers lived side by side.
The two languages were close enough that people could often get the gist of each other. That is the ideal recipe for borrowing: speakers meet halfway, swap everyday words and gradually blend them. If you want the full background on the ships that began it all, see our guide to the Viking longship.
The Place Names Give It Away
The clearest evidence is on the map. Hundreds of English towns end in -by (Norse for farmstead or village), including Whitby, Derby and Grimsby. Names ending in -thorpe (an outlying hamlet) and -thwaite (a clearing) are also Norse in origin, and they cluster thickly across Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Cumbria. Everyday landscape words such as fell (a mountain), beck (a stream) and tarn (a small mountain lake) came the same way, which is why they survive in the dialects of northern England.
Everyday Words Borrowed from Old Norse
What makes Norse loanwords remarkable is how ordinary they are. Languages usually borrow fancy or specialised terms. English borrowed the basics.
- Egg — from Old Norse egg. Old English had its own word, ǣg, but the Norse form eventually won out.
- Window — from vindauga, literally “wind eye”, a hole in the roof or wall that let in air and light.
- Knife — from knífr.
- Husband — from húsbóndi, “master of the house”.
- Law — from lagu, meaning something “laid down”. Scandinavian legal custom spread through the Danelaw, and the word came with it.
- Sky — from ský, originally meaning “cloud”. English had heofon for the heavens, and the Norse word took over the meaning we now use.
- Take — from taka, which gradually replaced the older Old English verb niman.
- Anger, ugly, happy, ill, weak, wrong — all borrowed from Norse adjectives and nouns of emotion and character.
- Cake, skull, freckle, die, get, give — more small, sturdy words that sound completely English today.
Note the sk- sound. In Old English, an original “sk” had softened into “sh”, which is why English has shirt (a native word) and skirt (the Norse twin of the same root). Where you see an English word with a hard “sk” sound, such as sky, skin, skill or skirt, there is a good chance it came from Scandinavia.
The Most Surprising Import: “They”
Perhaps the strangest case is grammar. The pronouns they, them and their come from Old Norse (þeir, þeim, þeira). Old English had its own forms beginning with “h”, such as hie and hem, but they were easy to confuse with he and her. The clearer Norse forms spread south from the Danelaw and gradually replaced them. Borrowing a pronoun is extremely rare in any language. It shows just how intimate contact between the two communities must have been.
Norse Mythology and Runes in English
Some borrowed words carry a whiff of saga. Berserk comes from the Old Norse berserkr, a warrior said to fight in a trance-like fury, perhaps “bear shirt” or “bare shirt” (scholars disagree). Saga is simply the Old Norse word for “story”. Ransack comes from rannsaka, to search a house. Troll and rune arrived much later through scholarly and literary use. For a modern echo of the rune alphabet, see our piece on Harald Bluetooth and the Jelling Stones, where two Viking-age runes sit inside the Bluetooth logo on your phone.
Modern Scandinavian Words in English
The second wave of borrowing is far more recent and far more specialised. These words arrived when English speakers met Nordic inventions, landscapes and institutions.
- Ski and slalom — from Norwegian (ski and slalåm, “sloping track”).
- Fjord — Norwegian, for a long, narrow sea inlet carved by glaciers.
- Lemming — from Norwegian.
- Smorgasbord — Swedish, literally “sandwich table”, now used for any wide spread of choices.
- Ombudsman — Swedish, a public official who investigates complaints.
- Tungsten — Swedish for “heavy stone”.
- Moped — Swedish, a blend of motor and pedal.
- Geyser — from Icelandic Geysir, the name of a famous hot spring.
- Skål — the Scandinavian toast, which English has adopted as “skoal”.
- Sauna — Finnish, and a reminder that Finland belongs to a different language family altogether.
That last example is a useful reminder: not every Nordic loanword is Scandinavian. Finnish and Sámi are unrelated to Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, and words like sauna and tundra come from those different roots. For how the labels differ, read Scandinavia vs the Nordic Countries. Finland also has a significant Swedish-speaking minority, which we explore in our article on the Finland-Swedes.
Can Scandinavians Still Understand Old Norse?
Icelandic has changed less than its mainland cousins, and Icelanders can read medieval sagas with modest effort. Danes, Norwegians and Swedes generally find Old Norse a challenge, though they will spot familiar roots. English speakers, meanwhile, can get a surprising amount of Norse by listening for the cognates. Swedish ägg, Danish æg and Norwegian egg all mean what you would hope.
A Few Words to Look Out for
Next time you read an English text, try spotting the Norse. Look for hard “sk” and “g” sounds in short, blunt words. Notice how often the plain, practical choice (get, give, take, they) turns out to be the Viking one. English is often described as a language that was invaded by French in 1066, and that is true. But a century and a half earlier, it had already been quietly rewired by the Danes and Norwegians who settled in its northern fields.
Conclusion
Old Norse never conquered the English language, yet it left its fingerprints on the most basic layer of it. Every time you say they, crack an egg or look out of a window, you are echoing the voices of Viking-age farmers who learned to live alongside their Anglo-Saxon neighbours. It is a reminder that languages, like the people who speak them, are shaped by meetings as much as by conquests.
Photo from the Scandification media library.
